


After the End

by jenny_wren



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 08:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3760807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_wren/pseuds/jenny_wren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex ends the world</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the End

**Author's Note:**

> I totally forgot I wrote this, and it seemed a shame to just delete it

The world falls apart. Buildings crumble into fire and rubble. People scream and run.

Clark Kent walks grimly forwards ignoring the heat and flame. He hasn’t bothered to transform into Superman, his gaudy camouflage against the world’s prying eyes. Luthor would recognise him regardless. He’d never been able to fool Lex.

Ever.

He walks on. Screams fade to sobs and then to whimpers and finally the only sound is the crackling fires and the only movment drifting smoke. The stillness grows like the blanket of soot until they shroud the sky.

Slowly the sound he’s been seeking settles in his ears. The huff of breath, the odd triple thump of his heart, the click of his tongue. Long search over; he can hear Lex Luthor again.

His vision allows him to study the cause of the destruction before Luthor can see him. He’s standing among the smouldering ruins, smirking. 

“Mr Kent, who very surprising to see you here. I expected my nemesis, to tell you the truth.”

Clark stares at his nemesis.

“Why?” he askes.

“Why not.”

With a great effort that Clark pulls the mantle of Superman over him. He juts his chin and stiffens up his back and tries to draw on his alter ego’s confidence.

“I will stop you, Luthor.”

“That’s better. I knew he couldn’t be far away.”

Superman just fell away from him his face crumpled and it was all he could do not to weep.

“Lex, why?”

Something falls away from Lex Luthor, the larger than life gestures consciously copied from Lionel, the presence of a physically big man. As if a blurry picture had been focused Clark can suddenly see Lex again. His friend from all those years ago. Slim, intense, no longer a powerhouse but an arrow, sharp and deadly and beautiful.

“Because I could. What else was there to do.” It’s not a question.

Clark remembers, years ago, a conversation about the many and the few. Lex had argued passionately that the needs of the many outweighing the few was a ‘fucking dangerous doctrine’. Because it meant somebody was making a choice and if their needs were always ignored and cast aside that somebody would be a very dangerous person indeed. 

Clark had tried to repeat the argument to his father later but he couldn’t have done it very well because Jonathon had brushed it aside as a tainted premise. Tainted by Luthors.

But Clark can see now what Lex had meant. Lex had always been one of the few, solitary in fact. Superman had rescued the many and abandoned Lex. That wasn’t true, Clark had walked away from Lex and had created Luthor and Superman as he did so.

They were true Nemesis created in the same instant.

Superman felt nothing he just rescued the many. And Clark Kent died little by little. Superman took over and Superman felt noting.

Clark Kent is horrified he could even think it but Superman is going to murder his best friend because of the needs of the many.

He rests his hand on Lex’s shoulder. Lex watches him completely unafraid, his eyes hollow.

“Go on, what are you waiting for.”

He takes a step closer to his Nemesis, his Destiny, his Lex.

His Lex.

His.

 

Something snaps.

Looping both arms tightly around his Lex, Clark shoots straight up into the sky. He stops just about the height a human can still breath and just stands there holding Lex tightly in his arms.

Lex looks down.

“It will be a long fall.” And there is almost a gladness in his voice.

Clark tightens his grip.

“Lex, I’m not going to let you fall.”

“I thought you were going to drop me.” Lex’s voice is still bland but he presses a little closer to Clark.

“Never,” he swears. Because he’s Clark now and the needs of the many are forgotten in the needs of the few. Of he and Lex. Of Lex above all. Because nothing is ever going to be right if Lex is lost to him for good. Because Superman can never defeat Luthor just as Luthor can never defeat Superman. The can’t even exist in the same place.

Like the particles Lex made in his lab. Created in the same instant, total opposites in every way they circle each other until they meet again and find annihilation together because each was created solely to destroy the other.

 

They land abruptly in the middle of Australia. LuthorCorp’s plans for World Destruction are yet to reach here.

Clark pulls Lex closer kissing him, stroking his skull and all the while murmuring, 

“My love, my love.”

Lex rests one warm hand against his chest.

“Clark.” And his voice is tender and warm and from twenty years ago.

Clark’s eyes are sore from holding back his tears.

 

They sit quietly in the desert. Clark’s not sure how long for. Finally he speaks.

“I’m sorry,” he says and “I wish.”

Lex pulls away.

“Our time was out of joint. It’s not your fault Clark. If I’d been younger when I’d met you, less spoilt…” he trails off.

“Or I’d been older.” Because Clark knows half the blame is his. Half of everything is his. But most especially the blame. If he’d been older or wiser or both. Able to identify and stand up to Jonathon’s prejudices. Able to comprehend the danger from Lionel in time. Able to see that Lex was not waving but drowning. So many times he could have pulled him ashore but always the needs of the many.

O Lex, my love.

“Regardless,” says Lex, “Lionel would have destroyed it all. You were so vulnerable and you made me so vulnerable.” 

“You killed him,” says Clark. It’s not an accusation just another worn fact. 

Lex killed his father. Clark walked away. He can’t say which came first or if one caused the other. In his heart he sees them as one single, indivisble, act.

The act that created Luthor and Superman both and destroyed Clark and Lex. As Superman and Luthor can’t exist together, Lex and Clark can’t exist apart.

“Not in time. I knew, I knew that would be the one thing you could never forgive. So I didn’t, until it was far too late.” Lex sounds so tired and so broken.

But Clark is broken too. He can only wish that Lex had struck sooner and he had been right by his side. Morals and Justice mean nothing compared to his Lex. Once he was horrified by the deed but now he’s too weary from the struggle and the loneliness and all he knows is that Lex is the only thing in this world he still gives a damn about.

 

Lex slumps back against him.

“Is it time for my final flight yet?” And the longing in his voice shatters all that is left of Superman.

He stands up, lifting Lex with him. Carefully he tugs his leather jacket around his precious man. Cradling the back of his neck in one large hand he pushes Lex’s head down against his chest. With a sigh Lex relaxes against him.

“Hold on tight my love.”

And then he’s flying. Faster than he ever has before. Flying against time itself.

Twenty years is a long time to fly back through but this is for Lex and that’s easy.

 

They come to a stop outside a mansion in Metropolis. Dawn glows golden as inside an argument reaches its crescendo and, in less than four minutes, a young Lex Luthor is going to slam out of the house, out of Metropolis and into Clark Kent’s life.

Clark looks down.

“Lex, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He looks around and then down at the house.

“Damn, why’d you have to bring us here Clark. Wait a minute.” He looks back at Clark, his beautiful eyes, wide and shocked. Because Lex knows, just as well as Clark, that his first act after killing his father was to raze this building to the ground. It was the very last time Lex put sentiment before profit until he decided to burn the world down around them.

“Clark, what did you do?”

“I brought us back.”

“Back.”

A car skidded erratically out the garage. Lex watched it with detached interest.

“That’s you heading into exile. Tomorrow you’re going to rock my world.”

There’s a light in Lex’s eyes that Clark hasn’t seen since they were young and almost in love.

“You mean we can stop it?”

“Yes. Everything we still have happened but if we can change it, our timeline will vanish as if it had never been.”

“How will we know?”

“We’ll vanish with it.”

“Oh,” says Lex, “Good.” Then as an afterthought. “How much time will we have?”

“I don’t know. It depends when the timeline changes. We’ll have at least a month maybe more. The aslylum was the beginning of end but I don’t believe things will ever get that bad this time around.”

Lex thinks for a moment, then nods his head.

“Good, but what do you intend to do? Cryptic warnings to our future selves.” Lex’s smiles, a true smile of pure mischief.

“No,” says Clark, though he’s interested in what Lex would say. Maybe he’ll ask him later, if they have time. “No. I have a much more practical idea. I’m not going to let anything mess this up.”

“Oh?”

“We’re going to kill,” he stutters, he almost said, ‘your father’. “We’re going to kill Lionel.”

“Oh. Good plan.”

 

With Lex’s knowledge of the alarm codes and Clark’s ability to fly, it’s almost too easy to get into Lionel’s bedroom.

Lionel sits up in shock.

Clark places Lex gently in a chair and flashes across the room and has his hand over Lionel’s mouth before he can yell for help. Twisting he locks one arm around the man’s neck and turns so he can look in his love’s eyes.

“Clark?” Lex yelps in surprise. 

“I’m sure Lex. Half of everything of yours is mine, including the responsibility. You killed him the first time, now it’s my turn.”

Lex nods his head. He can’t be unaware that Superman had been getting a little careless lately. If you don’t care whether you live or die, it’s hard to care about anybody else’s survival.

Clark’s vaguely aware Lionel’s thrashing is getting more violent and he’s so very tired of this man. He looks again into his love’s eyes and easily snaps the neck. He drops the body onto the bed and wipes his hands of on the bedspread.

Years ago the very thought would have made him sick but it is only the nessecsity of touching Lionel that makes his skin crawl. Despair has eaten him almost hollow and only Lex stops him collapsing into nothingness.

But Lex is here. Lex is looking at him and those eyes, he could drown in them. Quickly he snaps back into the plan. There’s just one more thing they have to do.

“Quick Lex, let’s get you to his study.”

“Why?”

“Given the disgrace you are in, it wouldn’t be surprising if he changed his will.”

“Why?”

“Lex, you were twenty-one. LuthorCorp would swallow you whole. The Plant and some,” Lex snorts, “alright, a lot of money are all you need. I give you eight years before you get LexCorp up to this level.”

“Six years, you’re on.”

It takes very little time for Lex to have a solid Will and Testament, leaving young Lex just rich enough.

Lex stares at nothing in particular.

“You know it was the one thing that finally made him proud of me.”

“I know Lex,” Clark says, because he does.

“Clark, I’m tired, can we go now?”

“Sure, just let me deal with the trash.”

He drops the body in the darker end of Metropolis. He resists the temptation to redress the body in bondage leather. That would hurt young Lex too much and he simply can’t hurt Lex anymore.

 

Back in Lionel’s office Lex has tidied everything away and is sitting in the chair, studying a silver pen. He smiles when he sees Clark. Clark smiles back.

“Come on, let’s be going.”

“Where?” asks Lex already looping his arms around Clark’s waist.

“I’ve got something to show you.”

 

And together they watch a Porsche speeding down a lane, a boy’s miraculous escape, and equally miraculous rescue and they watch two sets of eyes find each other and two hearts begin to beat in unison.

 

They’re back in Australia outback now. They’ve had three months and Clark and Lex could not be happier. It was almost worth everything for this. And one day soon they’ll begin to fade away. And Clark will hold his Lex tightly to him one last time as they sink into peace. And then it will have been worth everything.


End file.
